The Great Gatsby, Essay Example

The Great Gatsby represents a novel written in 1925 by F. Scott Fitzgerald, in which the author provides a commentary on various elements, activities, and themes portrayed during the novel’s decade. The primary themes established include power, justice, betrayal, the American dream, and greed, among others. In addition, the most developed element was social stratification. The novel also offers up several lessons applicable in life, including how money is incapable of buying one love. It also speaks on the value of not critiquing other people, the fickle nature of physical beauty, the challenging aspect about leaving one’s past behind, how unbridled passion may not always be a good notion, and the futile, noble trait of optimism (Cowley 77). Another central theme expounded on in the novel is the element of materialism and prosperity during those times. Irrespective of the United States appearing as prosperous and full of affluence in the 1920s, the created wealth and mentality spurred moral decay and overwhelming materialism in society.

The novel was authored by Francis Scott Fitzgerald, an American essayist, short story writer, screenwriter, and novelist. He was recognized for his books that portrayed the excess and flamboyance of the Jazz period.  Fitzgerald was based in Europe during the 1920s, where he met and got fascinated with a Chicago socialite named Ginevra, who became his inspiration for the Daisy character in the Great Gatsby. This was his third novel which was also stirred by his association with Zelda and the rise to fame. Despite receiving mixed reviews, The Great Gatsby is currently widely praised and labeled as the great American novel by some individuals.

The Great Gatsby setting is the prosperous 1922 Long Island, which provides the prohibition era’s social history during the Jazz era in America (Morretta 179). Fitzgerald’s narrative renders this period entirely, with its historical context of economic prosperity, rebellious youth, ubiquitous speakeasies, flapper culture, and most familiar jazz music. The author made use of the societal developments in the 1920s to describe his narrative, from subtle details such as automobiles’ petting to wider themes, including his discreet bootlegging allusions as Gatsby’s fortune’s source. Fitzgerald educated his audience on the Jazz age’s hedonistic community by establishing an applicable plotline in the historical framework of “the most raucous, gaudy era in U.S. history which raced along under its own power, served by great filling stations full of money” (Cowley 80). In the author’s eyes, the 1920s primarily represented an ethically permissive period when Americans were disenchanted with predominant social norms and portrayed a monomaniacal self-gratification obsession. The Jazz period depicted an entire race turning hedonistic. Given this, The Great Gatsby was Fitzgerald’s effort to share his hesitant feelings concerning the Jazz period and themes, which he later regarded as insightful of his life’s events.

A significant theme reflected in the novel is the American dream. Following its revival, other critical reviews on the novel concentrated on Fitzgerald’s cynicism with the American dream’s concept during the debauched Jazz period. A scholar named Roger L. Pearson claimed that Fitzgerald’s novel was mainly connected with this theme’s conceptualization than most other novels in the twentieth century (Batchelor, 272). Fitzgerald put across the notion that all individuals had the capacity to pursue and accomplish their chosen ambitions, be they monetary, social, or political irrespective of their origins. This forms America’s concept of its literary expression, which is also depicted as the homeland of growth and opportunity. The novel also illustrates the application of the class permanence theme. Most writers and scholars attribute Gatsby’s incapacity to attain the American dream to rooted class disparities within the American society. The novel describes the limitations on the lower-class American communities to surpass their birth stations. The novel is also classified as a class warfare tale within a status-obsessed nation that fails to acknowledge a class system’s presence publicly.

Although different scholars offer diverse explanations for class differences and their continuation within the United States, there remains a consensus on the novel’s communication of its existing permanence. Despite the novel fundamental conflict between socio-economic power sources and upstarts threatening their interests, Fitzgerald illustrates how class permanence perseveres regardless of the country’s consumerist economy that appreciates adaptability and innovation (Fitzgerald, 152). Aside from exploring the challenges faced in realizing the American dream, the Great Gatsby expounds on societal gender expectancies in the Jazz period. In the novel, Daisy Buchanan’s character has been recognized as particularly personifying the flapper’s emergent cultural archetype. Flappers were viewed as typical modern, young women with bobbed hair and short skirts who partook in premarital sex and drank alcohol.

The novel has also been analyzed on its treatment of displacement and race during the 1920s. In particular, an analysis on the apparent threat postured by newer settlers to deep-rooted Americans triggers concerns on the deficit of socio-economic position. This illustrates how immigration became a controversial issue in the nation. On a specific occasion, one novel antagonist, Tom Buchanan, asserted that he was a racially exceptional Nordic, decried immigration, and advocated for white supremacy. In analyzing these elements, Fitzgerald’s novel illustrates a historical era within American literature characterized by worries over the Eastern and Southern European immigrants’ influx which challenged the American national identity logic. Such fears were prevalent in national debates than the social significances during the first world war. Environmental and technological criticisms of the Great Gatsby try to situate the characters and the novel in a wider historical perspective. In 1964, one Leo Marx contended that Fitzgerald’s novel created a tension amid the complex pastoral notion of a long-gone America and the social transformations resulting from machine technology and industrialization (Batchelor, 274). He argued that Fitzgerald expressed a rustic longing that was normal for other American writers in the 1920s, including Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner.

As aforementioned, the United States appeared as full of affluence and prosperity during the 1920s. This prosperity spurred irresistible materialism and societal ethical decay, which countered affluence (Fitzgerald, 148). Irrespective of providing a commentary for different people and ages, the Great Gatsby narrative is currently as significant as during its writing period. This is because it explores numerous universal themes, such as man’s skirmish with fate and time, the impossibility of social constructs, and human follies. The story’s setting took place during the thriving twenties, and its characters have different goals and dreams. However, most of these dreams don’t end well; thus, the Great Gatsby is primarily centered on unattainable dreams. In addition, much of the narrative concerns the aspect of illusion. Such include illusions of the American dream and romantic love as it pertains to substantial wealth.

Works Cited

Batchelor, Bob. Gatsby: The cultural history of the great American novel. Scarecrow press, 2013.

Cowley, Julian. The Great Gatsby. Pearson UK, 2015.

Fitzgerald, Francis Scott. The Great Gatsby (1925). na, 1991.

Scott Fitzgerald and the Jazz AgeSeries: Writers and their Times by Alison Morretta